The Mafia Husband’s Loveless Marriage (A Billionaire Who Grovels #15)

Before

THE MAN HIT THE GROUND on his knees.

This one was bleeding from his mouth and from a cut above his left eye. The blood had gotten into the eye and he kept blinking to clear it, which was a waste of effort. There was more where that came from.

Mykos hit him again.

Not in the face this time. The ribs. Two short strikes, controlled, and the sound was the sound of something giving way. The man's body folded. His forehead hit the concrete floor, and a groan came out of him, wet and ragged, the kind of sound that no longer cared about dignity.

Mykos waited.

He always gave them a fair chance. That was the rule. The only rule he had kept from his father's world, and the only one that mattered. If a man could stand, he could fight. If he could fight, he could win. But they never won, and not because Mykos was invincible.

It was because they feared death.

And that fear crippled them. It made their fists slow, their eyes desperate, their breathing ragged. They fought like men trying to survive, but that was exactly the problem.

Survival made them hesitate while Mykos...

He had no one to protect, nothing in this world that would make him weak or desperate.

Seconds ticked by, but the man on the floor remained down. His name was Sanchez, and he had raped the daughter of an associate. Neither Sanchez nor the father of his victim had ever worked for Diogenes, but they were in the same world, and that made him fair game.

While Sanchez had managed to evade the authorities for eleven months, he hadn’t been able to escape Mykos. On the day his father died thirteen years ago, he had been faced with a choice. Take the throne and rule his father’s empire. Or let it crumble into ashes and turn over a new leaf.

In the end, Mykos had chosen neither. He had cut a deal with law enforcement, one that suited both of them. They gave him a list, and Mykos hunted them down while law enforcement looked the other way for as long as it took.

“I believe he’s out, sir.”

The assessment had Mykos turning away. “Then we’re done with him.”

One of his men was already there, holding out a clean washcloth. Mykos took it and wiped the blood from his knuckles, methodically, one finger at a time. His hands were unmarked except for the red. The pain was minimal. It always was.

Behind him, his men moved with the efficiency of a machine that had been running for thirteen years. They no longer required instruction.

Two scrubbed the floor and the walls. Another pair lifted Sanchez’s unconscious body and carried it to the unmarked van at the loading dock, where a driver was already behind the wheel.

In the glovebox was a sealed envelope: a signed confession, supporting evidence, and every detail the authorities would need.

Not to free the girl, but to ensure that the man who had hurt her would never be free again.

The van pulled out of the loading dock and was gone within seconds, swallowed by the city as if it had never been there at all.

Mykos watched until there was nothing left to watch. He had sought this deal, believing that it would silence the demons of his past. And for a time, it had done what it was supposed to do. Every time he crossed a name off his list, he had a moment of numbness that was almost peaceful.

Almost.

But that, too, eventually faded, until there was no hiding from the restlessness that burned hotter in the hours where the world went to sleep, and the ones left awake were people like him.

Something was wrong. Every day, Mykos could feel his need growing, but satisfying this was impossible because he didn’t know what he was craving. All he knew was that the hunger existed, and not even the controlled violence of nights like tonight could quiet it.

Mykos knew that if things went on this way, there would come a day when this craving would devolve into bloodlust...

It was only to be hoped that he still had enough honor and sanity to turn himself in if that happened.

But for now...

The sound of Mykos’s phone buzzing had his lips curving in a cold, sharp smile. It was almost as if fate itself didn't trust him to dwell too long on the darkness inside his own chest.

The email came from his legal department, which was in charge of keeping track of every individual who had once been part of his father's empire. The living and the dead. The imprisoned and the free. Their debts. Their families. Their unfinished business.

Today, the report his team forwarded was about the death of a man named Homer Nolan. Mykos read it standing in the empty loading dock, the washcloth still in his hand.

Homer Nolan had worked for Diogenes for a short while before being charged with illegal possession of firearms and a string of related offenses. He received a life sentence but kept his mouth shut while serving his time. That was the only loyalty their world respected.

In his latter years, a scamming operation had targeted his identity and borrowed heavily under his name. Nolan hadn't known. He'd died a month ago from a heart attack, and the debts he never incurred had passed on to his only living relative.

His daughter.

Mykos clicked on the photo attached to the report.

Ah.

Something stirred inside of him.

He had thought this was simply to be his next assignment. One of those rare cases that came to him through the mechanics of routine surveillance, requiring nothing more than a phone call to his legal team and a transfer of funds to settle the debt.

But instead...

Mykos looked at the photo for a long time.

A nineteen-year-old girl with blond hair and green eyes. A slender build that should have made her look fragile, but there was something about the set of her shoulders that made Homer’s daughter seem like a model of resilience instead.

Mykos pocketed his phone.

Tomorrow, if he still remembered this girl existed...

Then he would personally make a move.